A Year in the Forest

  The view down into the stream bed is getting clearer every day as the leaves fall and allow more light into the picture.  Two things caught my attention today.

Frist crows.  As I started my walk this morning I noticed first how quiet it was and then for some reason the birds started singing.  I enjoyed the diverse sounds of the bird songs for a few minutes and then the crows started cawing.  The other birds shut up at this point.  With the leaves coming down, I looked up and for the saw the flock of crows that were making all the noise – there were at least 30 crows.  And then I began to notice that they were the loudest when I was moving.  So I started experimenting.  When ever I stopped and didn’t move they quieted down.  Whenever I began to move again, their raucous noise began again.  When I got close to the house they quieted down.  Hmmmm.

Second PawPaws.  My path goes right down the middle of a large paw-paw patch.  I noted earlier how the animals stripped this patch of paw-paws early in the season.  Yesterday I found another patch, untouched by the wildlife because of the strong sweet smell and harvested a few.  That patch is stripped now.  Today I wandered off the path to look at a large root ball when I noticed the ground littered with paw-paws and looked up to see one lone paw-paw loaded with paw-paws.    So the wildlife got the majority of the paw-paws but left some of the later ripening ones.